


The Spark And The Sword

by thelilacfield



Series: there is no world where i am not yours [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragons, F/M, Fairy Tale Style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25651654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: Some stories say that dragons read minds, that there were some brave souls who harnessed this and that was the first move that gave humans their advantage in the old war.But he never read a story about a dragon with the voice of a frightened woman.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: there is no world where i am not yours [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859725
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33
Collections: AUgust 2020





	The Spark And The Sword

**A/N:** Hello friends, it is me attempting a challenge! I'm following the AU-gust challenge and you can read more about it and see what is hopefully coming for the next month **[here](https://augustwritingchallenge.tumblr.com/post/621653119656493056/the-list-of-prompts-was-completed-one-prompt-per#notes)**! I hope you're all excited to see my attempt at this challenge. I'll be following the prompts in order and they will all be in a series so you can marathon them if you would like.

Please leave a comment if you enjoy this fic! I'm on tumblr and twitter **@ mximoffromanoff** if anyone wants to chat!

* * *

To the outside eye, the kingdom by the sea appears perfect. A picturesque painting, the white cliffs and the sparkling water, boats bobbing on the waves in the bleached harbour and the clean stone walls of the palace, its grounds overflowing with colourful flowers until the emerald grass spilled into soft pale sand, the kingdom with its tiny pretty houses and golden stone paths, the fountain bubbling in the square and the sea birds swirling overhead. It's known as far as the distant mountains as a place for artists, a place for retirement, a place to live a life of leisure in comfortable clothes and blazing sunshine.

But look a little closer, and the cracks in the painting start to show. Shutters closed on those pretty little houses, doors locked and lights turned low. The only sound in the square is the endless watery chatter of the fountain. The castle gardens are tended to by staff who keep their gaze low, fear in their eyes whenever they look to the sky. The beaches are empty, and if any child strays too close to the sands they're called back by terrified parents. Livestock are guarded night and day. And the caws of the sea birds are often cut short by the silent shadow that sweeps across the kingdom.

Visitors are a rare occurrence, and there's a shortage of guards who are concentrated on livestock, on the palace, and on keeping children who don't know any better away from the sea caves. So there is no one standing at the grand pillars that signal the entrance to the kingdom. No one to watch the young man take a deep breath in before he steps into the kingdom, the small smile that crosses his nervous face when he takes that first step onto the golden stone.

This young man looks around nervously as he follows the sloping paths towards the palace. He is used to bustle in his home kingdom near the mountains, minstrels playing music on the corners and colourful markets with even more colourful vendors. The silence is eerie for such a beautiful place. Sunlight dapples on striped awnings and the fountains shimmers silver with coins, the beach a distant crescent of white sand, but no one but him is in the streets to appreciate the beauty. He expected the streets to be rich with sugar scents from a bakery, for tables outside the tavern to be filled by raucous afternoon drinkers, for the beaches to be filled with families.

But the only evidence of life he sees is the scant cloud of sea birds mournfully calling overhead, and the occasional flicker of a silhouette in the windows of the houses he passes.

The palace gardens are beautiful, rich with colour, the golden gates soaring between the white stone pillars. Guards in uniforms bearing the kingdom sigil of a swollen sun stand at either side, and the guard who lifts his visor regards the young man with suspicion in his narrowed eyes. "What's your business?" he asks, and the young man winces at the heaviness of his tone.

"My name is Victor, sir," he says, the speech he's rehearsed since he left the mountains, coaxing his horse over the hills. "I've come all the way from the mountains to seek employment here. I've been riding horses my whole life, my father was the horsemaster for the royals in my kingdom. I can fence, I can swim, I'm fast and I'm smart and-"

"We're not looking for new guards," the guard says sharply, and Victor bows his head in disappointment. "I'm sure the mountain kingdom wants for soldiers too."

"I hate it there," Victor confesses softly. "The clouds never leave. It's cold even in the height of summer. Our way of life is hard. And I'd always heard tell of this kingdom and its beauty, how calm it is here." He blinks once to push the sudden sting of tears away and confesses, "Until I arrived to the nearby villages last night, I'd never seen the ocean."

"Son, listen to me," the guard says, and Victor looks up to the shadowing on his face, his eyes dark and serious. "This kingdom is not safe. Perhaps word hasn't made its way to the mountains yet, but you should not be here. Go home."

"I want this to be my home," he says stubbornly, and the guard rolls his eyes. "My father passed this last winter. There is nothing for me in the mountains. If you send me away now, I'll only come back tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. I'll come here every day until you allow me in."

"You have no idea what you're getting yourself into," the guard says, and Victor frowns, crossing his arms defiantly. "Didn't you wonder why you didn't see a soul in the streets on your way up here?"

"Well...it did seem a little odd," he says, and the guard nods. "This is such a beautiful place. I thought there would be people everywhere. My father brought me here once when I was a child, and it was bustling and full of joy."

"It used to be," the guard says darkly. "But we don't have the luxury of fun anymore. For ten years we've been plagued by a dragon that takes children and livestock in the dark, and our people are too frightened to come out of their homes for much more than an hour a day."

Forgetting his manners, Victor snorts and says, "The dragons all died millenia ago."

"Yes, it's easy to think that when you haven't watched a mother weep as her child is snatched up by its claws," the guard says, sending a frisson of cold skittering down Vision's spine. "There's a dragon here, son. It lives in the caves, so no one goes to the beach anymore. It takes livestock, so farmers guard their animals night and day. It goes for anything and anyone foolish enough to be in the streets when it gets late, so we live in fear."

"Hasn't the king tried to do something?"

"Of course he has!" the guard snaps, making Victor flinch. "But he lost too many good men and women to the dragonflame. So instead we take care of our own and we hope that someone will kill it someday."

"I could do it!" The words spill from him before he can pull them back, and a ruddy flush of embarrassment heats his face when the guard raises a skeptical eyebrow. "I _could_. I'm good with a sword, and I've hunted in the mountains, in the woods in the dark. I'm not afraid."

"This isn't some little deer or a rabbit, son. This is a _dragon_." The guard's eyes cast up to the sky, as if the creature will come swooping down on thm at any second. "It's smaller than those of the legends, but still big enough to destroy a home by landing on it. Blood red and black eyed, and when it breathes fire it razes everything in its path to the ground. You should be afraid of something like that."

"I hunted mountain lions in the woods when they attacked our horses," Victor says, obstinately lifting his chin. "They're much harder to track than some great enormous dragon. I could do it. Give me some armour and a sword, and I could do it. I could help."

Finally, the guard chuckles low in his chest. "You're determined, son, I'll give you that much," he says, and Victor preens slightly. "I'll take you before the king, and you can negotiate with him. There isn't much in the way of lodgings in this place, but perhaps we can set you up with a room somewhere. If you're so determined to stay."

"Oh, thank you, sir!" Victor says, the joy unfurling bright in his chest. "I won't let you down, I swear! I can be the hero you've been waiting for!" The guard just shakes his head with a bemused smile, and opens the golden gates to him.

The moment he steps across the grounds of the palace, dust stirring up from the path beneath his footfall, he breathes in the clean, crisp sea air and smiles. Though he has to prove himself, the sun seems to shine down on him and the kingdom welcomes him in like an old friend. This is going to be his place, his home, somewhere where he'll make a home among the artists and the sunlight.

All he has to do first is defeat a dragon.

* * *

A soldier now, wearing the sun at his breast, Victor grows slowly used to the strange, offbeat rhythm of life in the kingdom by the sea. He rises with the sun, her pale fingers creeping over the horizon to pull night aside like curtains at windows, and wanders the cobblestones with his sword at his side, the leather sleeve swinging against his hip. He learns that light is much safer than dark, and starts to meet the people who inhabit the kingdom. The woman with her three children and her husband lost at sea who owns the bakery and gives him a pastry every morning. The artist who sits atop the cliffs and paints the distant horizon. Fellow soldiers who live in these pretty houses with shuttered windows and pale roofs.

He takes a few weeks to gather the courage to go to the beach, the gaping maws of the cave where they say the dragon lives. He hasn't seen the creature yet, but he's followed the example of the others making homes here and kept himself inside and secure at night. Trying to sleep, he's thought he's heard the beat of wings against the wind, a distant rumble like a roar, but perhaps it's been his imagination. But when he steps into the cave, he can feel the change in the air, the heavy heat, and he knows he can't pretend that the dragon is some superstitious story anymore.

The caves are a maze of narrow tunnels that he has to turn to navigate, rock scraping at his back and chest as he sidesteps through the caverns, and when he does find the vast cave at the centre of it all he nearly tumbles down in the dragon's lair when he sees the creature for the first time. His knuckles are white around the handle of his sword, his heart in his throat and his entire body shivering like the last leaf of autumn on its branch. Terror tastes like metal in his mouth and sends cold dripping sinuously down his spine.

The great creature is asleep, its wings folded down over its back. When he gathers his wits back to him and observes with intent to find its weak spot, he notices differences in this dragon in front of him and the dragons of legends and illustrations. It's much smaller than he imagined it being, a deep shade of red. Scarlet red, like blood and wine. Its tail tapers to a point, wrapped around it as it sleeps, and he looks around the cavern. It doesn't look like the dragon lairs of legend, no glowing hoard of gold and jewels or terrified maiden in a white lace dress. The walls are the bleached rock of the cliffs, like the sand on the beaches, and bearing nothing but the occasional claw scratch.

He stares down at the dragon, slowly drawing his sword from his side. The silver gleams slightly in the gloom, the wooden handle heavy and smooth in his hand, and he stares down at the dragon. It looks curiously small in sleep, its tail twitching like those of the lean, shaggy dogs that occupied the mountains, loyally padding after their masters in the livestock fields. It really is much smaller than the dragons in the stories. Maybe it's a young one, a fledgling. Out on its own for the first time.

Shaking his head to clear it of sympathy, he pushes those thoughts away. The dragon is not something to feel sorry for. It's a dangerous beast that has turned this beautiful, vibrant kingdom into a place where people are afraid to be on the open streets for more than five minutes. If he kills it, he'll be a hero sung about in stories, and he'll become a personal guard to the king. He'll be able to settle in a place where he can always see the sun, and he'll never have to go back to damp logs spitting in the fireplace and the empty house that still echoes with his father's laughter.

He climbs down carefully, making note of where the footholds in the sides of the cavern are. He'll be able to get back out again quickly, once he drives his sword into the dragon's heart. In a legend, the hero would cut the heart out and take it to his king, present it as a trophy. But he can't quite bear the thought of that, of a grotesque trophy leaving blood staining his clothes, of lingering too long in the hot, dank air of the cave. He would rather bring the older guards here and let them choose what to do when the dragon is dead.

As he stands over the dragon and raises his sword, it shifts. The long trail drags along the ground, almost brushing against his ankles as terror turns him to a statue. One eye flickers open, and he's rooted to the spot by the sight. The dragon's eyes aren't yellow or red or black like the stories. They're green, like grass and apples and emeralds, and frighteningly human.

He reels backwards, instinct driving him to flee in any way he can. But the dragon doesn't reach to threaten him. It seems to only curl in tighter on itself, almost afraid. That green eye stays fixed on him, like it's staring into his soul, and he scrambles back to the tunnel that brought him here, too scared to stay.

A brush against his mind, in the briefest moment before he bursts back into the sunlight, his hands scratched by the rocks and his heart pounding so hard it hurts. Some stories say that dragons read minds, that there were some brave souls who harnessed this and that was the first move that gave humans their advantage in the old war.

But he never read a story about a dragon with the voice of a frightened woman.

The dragons in the stories never whispered a desperate _Help me_ into a knight's mind as he fled.

* * *

As days and nights and weeks pass in the sundrenched kingdom, Victor cannot stop thinking about the dragon. He dreams of it - _her_. Her green eye piercing him like a blade, the terror in her voice echoing through his mind, the way she lay on the floor of the cave and curled tighter around herself when she saw his sword. Her scarlet scales twine through his dreams, and every day he looks back at the beach and the caves, feeling the magnetic pull of the mystery. Why she's hiding, why she's so small, why she didn't attack him, why she begged for his help. Why why _why_.

He can't stand it any longer on the fifteenth day of waking up in the middle of the night, haunted by the fear in the dragon's voice. Leaving his warm bed behind, he dresses for the cool sea air of the night and walks down to the caves, with nothing but a knife to defend himself and a torch to light the way. The bloody scrapes on his hands and shoulders have healed, but he opens the scabs again squeezing through the tunnels, dots of scarlet blood on his loose white shirt.

The dragon is awake this time, and she blinks up at him with those round green eyes. When he pauses to stare, he notices human anguish and fear in her eyes, and he sits down on the cold rock. She rises slowly from being curled up on the ground, her blunt snout almost able to reach him, and he flinches in fear. But she doesn't move to attack, only blinking at him like a cat in an alleyway. There's no swelling of fire glowing in her throat, and he tucks his knife away, letting her see him lay down his weapon. Then he finally asks, "What are you?" His voice is hoarse and thick with sleep in the silence, and the dragon lowers her head and closes her eyes.

He recognises the brush against his mind. She sounds calmer this time, though a delicate thread of fear still string her words together. Her voice makes her sound young, probably not much older than him if they aren't the same age. _I'm not a dragon. I'm a person. An enchantress cursed me and told me the curse will only break when I die. She stuck me like this._

"But magic isn't real," he says, keeping his voice low and quiet. It feels like disturbing the peace to speak any louder, ruining the quiet of the caves and the dragon looking at him, the green of her eyes painting itself permanently into his memory.

Her laugh echoes through his mind, and he wishes he knew what she looked like beneath the scarlet scales of the dragon. _You must be from the mountains. I heard no one there tells their children about magic anymore. Magic is everywhere. So are the people who can use it, and most use it for good. I just went to the wrong enchantress._

"Why?" He still needs to speak aloud, to make himself realise that this is truly happening, that he is sitting in a cave in the middle of the night talking to a woman trapped in a dragon's body, hearing her story.

 _A dragon attacked my family's estate. It killed them, so I attacked it and somehow I killed it._ Her voice is shockingly level for such an awful story, and he flinches, sympathy weight heavy on his shoulders. _It was the enchantress' pet, and to punish me she turned me into a dragon. She trapped me as the creature I killed, the creature that killed my family and ruined my life. And before I killed her and escaped after she enslaved me, she told me there's no way to break the curse except to die_.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asks, his voice echoing against the jagged cave walls. And she looks at him with the same piercing gaze that froze him the first time he saw her, those eyes filling up his entire world. "Please. Tell me."

 _I want you to kill me_.

" _What_?!" The exclamation rips out of him much louder than he meant it to, rolling through the air like a crack of thunder. "But...I don't even know your name!"

 _Wanda_. Her name plays through his mind in bright colours, in her pretty voice that he's starting to notice an accent to, one that belongs to the distant lands across the sea. _You're different to the other soldiers. You hesitated to hurt me. I'm tired of living like this. If you'll kill me and do it quickly, then you'll live your dream_.

"How do you know about that?"

 _I can read your mind, Vision_.

"That's not my name."

 _But when I saw you hesitate over a sleeping dragon with a sword in your hand I thought I was imagining you. You were my vision._ He can hear her take a breath in his mind, while nausea rises sour in his chest at the thought of killing her. Even thinking of killing the dragon when he knows that there's someone trapped inside that body makes preemptive guilt claw hotly at the back of his neck. _Please. I want to be free._

"You can't simply...you can't tell me your name and tell me your story and then try to make me your ending," he says, and she bows her great head, her scarlet scales flashing in brief pockets of moonlight. "Maybe I could find another sorcerer. Someone to break the curse."

_Don't you think I've tried to do that? She turned me into this creature ten years ago, and I've never found someone who could break the curse. She tied it too tightly into my life, so that I have to die to break it._

"But-"

 _Please. Help me. Kill me. Set me free_.

* * *

Victor tosses and turns for seven days and seven nights, thinking of Wanda. Her green eyes and the desperation in her voice, the sadness weighing her story down. He dreams of dragonflame burning a family down to its last member, dreams of a thousand girls who all have green eyes, wakes up to weigh his sword in his hands and wonder if he could truly find it in himself to kill the dragon. If he could have the strength to set Wanda free like she asked him.

After the eighth night of disturbed sleep, he wakes before the sun to form a plan. He goes to the palace and demons an audience with the king, to tell him that he has found a way to kill the dragon. He asks only for a few soldiers to accompany him in case of injury, through none of them will have to risk themselves coming into the cave. And the king, his dark hair streaked liberally with grey and his eyes weary, perks up on his throne and agrees.

He leads the soldiers to the beach, leaves these brave men outside to guard the entrance to the cave and be sure no one follows him. The corridors in the caves are narrow and dark, pressing into his chest and stealing his breath, but when he gets close to the centre of it all he feels the brush against his mind that has become somehow familiar. A soft, gentle whisper of _Vision_. Wanda's voice, and her eyes looking at his when he steps into the hollow centre of the caves.

"Wanda." Saying her name out loud tastes like gold on his lips, a perfect collection of sounds and letters and syllables. He can see past the scarlet dragon to the girl trapped beneath that scaled skin, even though he never met her. Her desperation to be free.

_Did you think about what I asked you to do?_

"I did," he says softly, and those green eyes fix on him as his fingers brush the hilt of his sword.

_Are you here to do it?_

"I..." His knuckles whiten as he draws his sword, seeing the silver blade reflected in her eyes. "I don't want to hurt you."

_You won't. I trust you to make it quick._

"But I...I'm still _killing_ you."

 _You're setting me free._ Her eyes are glistening with what looks like human sadness, human hope, and he flinches at the heaviness of her gaze. _Please, Vision. Please do this._

He walks closer to her, feeling the heat of dragonflame radiating from her. She raises her head to follow his movement as he plants a hand on her side, feeling the ridges of the scarlet scales beneath his hand. Slowly searching for the chink in the armour that every dragon has, finding it and raising his sword. He looks at her as his blade hangs at his side, and quietly says, "I hope you find peace."

She's looking at him when he raises the sword and plunges it through skin and scale. There's no blood, no shriek of pain, nothing like he imagined. The flame light in her throat goes out and the dragon slumps to the ground with a sigh that almost sounds peaceful. He pulls his sword back and lets it clatter to the ground, absurd tears stinging his eyes as he stumbles back against the wall of the cave, shaking.

Then there's light. Brighter than sunlight mirrored in the sea, so painfully bright he closes his eyes against it, the glow still piercing through his closed lids. When the light dies, it's a long moment before he looks again, afraid of what he might see.

And he sees a young woman. Sprawled on the floor of the cave, dark hair and pale skin and white dress, and it must be instinct that drives him to her side as his mind tries desperately to understand what's happening. She's very still, but when he watches he sees her chest shallowly rise and fall, and breathes out in relief. It gives him a moment to look at her, the hollows of her cheekbones and her dark eyelashes resting over pale skin and the scattering of pale freckles across the bridge of her nose.

When her eyes fly open, they're the same green that twined through his dreams. And her voice is the voice he heard in his mind.

"Vision?"

" _Wanda_?"

* * *

The kingdom by the sea slowly returns to its reputed perfection. With the threat of the dragon gone, people aren't so afraid to return to the streets. Scents of baked bread and sweet cakes swirl on the air, music echoes from the open windows of the tavern, and laughter comes back to the kingdom. The shroud of fear is slowly peeled away. Families play on the beaches and groups of friends sit by the babbling fountain beneath the moonlight, talking and smoking the night away.

They have reason to celebrate. The dragon is dead, and the king seems younger with relief, with his new golden-haired guard by his side. Not only that, but they've discovered that the young girl who went missing ten years ago was kidnapped by the dragon. Though the manor she's the heir to burned down long ago, the kingdom is so grateful to see her alive that people offer her anything. They are trying to rebuild a manor that she can make her own.

Victor goes by Vision more often these days. Wanda only calls him by that nickname, in her soft pretty voice, her accent from across the sea lingering in his mind and distracting him in his days at work. The other guards make fun of him for being so infatuated, make jokes that he would never have been able to court her if Lord Django was alive. They say that he meant for his daughter to marry the son of a king, that he had great ambitions for her beauty and her grace.

But he knows the truth. Wanda is staying with him in the tiny house he's been given, and he knows. He hears her nightmares and listens to her talk in the middle of the night when neither of them can sleep. Her dark hair falling forward to hide her pretty face while she paints stories for him, the crackle of dragonflame and her family's screams, the ten years trapped in the body of a beast that she wanted to escape from. They form a trust in those moments.

Perhaps he shouldn't be so surprised at his feelings for her. But he never came to the kingdom to fall in love, and certainly not with a lord's daughter, the heir to a manor across the sea. In the mountains, he would have married another servant's daughter, no doubt. They would have had a small family and a quiet life. None of this strange story that has become his song by the sea.

There's a festival to celebrate the freedom from the danger of the dragon, and he's given the day away from his duties to attend. Wanda wears red, her eyes the brightest and her smile the widest he's seen, and they spend the day together. There's music and dancing and laughter and drinking. They end up on the beach, near the caves, and she leans her head onto his shoulder as the smell of salt stings the air and twines her fingers with his.

He shouldn't be so surprised that she kisses him. His mind screams at him to respond and he does, curving a hand to the small of her back, the thin material of her dress crumpling beneath her fingers. She kisses him beneath the moonlight, in a pool of silver like a story, and when she pulls away she draws him into the warm embrace of the ocean, in darkness a long way from revellers and their fires on the beach, the smell of roasting meat and music that beats in his bones when her fingers tug at the buttons of his shirt.

The kingdom by the sea is perfect. It is a place for artists, for dreamers, for those who want to spend their lives soaking up the sun and surrounded by people who smile and laugh and celebrate. It is a place for people who want freedom. A safe place.

The only place the dragonflame lives on is the fire Vision loves in Wanda's eyes.


End file.
